Add a camera to a light for ease of aiming

As described in this tutorial, aiming lights can be easier if you can see “through” the light using a camera duct-taped on to it. Commonly found in 3D apps, the light-view option is sadly lacking in After Effects. Well here’s a script to do the duct-taping for you.

What it does is create a camera with the same point of interest, position, and zoom (≈cone angle) as the light, then makes the camera the parent of the light. You can then use the camera tools in AE to aim the new camera, and the light will follow. Just remember to de-activate it before rendering.

Download

You can download this script along with all my other scripts here. Or to download just this script click the download button below.

Installation

After Effects will take care of the installation for you. For scripts without a UI, go to the File menu in AE and choose Scripts>Install Script. Point it at the unzipped .jsx file that you just downloaded and let it work its magic, then restart AE.

Running the script

Scripts without a GUI can be run from the File>Scripts> menu. Once the script is installed it should appear in this menu, or you can run it without installing it using File>Scripts>Run Script File. If you use them a lot you can assign a keyboard shortcut to them.

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